Assassins

by Jim Eldridge

  ‘What did he look like?’

  The barman frowned, thinking, trying to recall. ‘Not very distinguishable, to be honest. Pretty ordinary-looking sort of bloke. Early thirties, at a guess. Bit of a moustache. Darkish hair kept neat and tidy. Average height. Average build.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Ordinary working clothes. Jacket. Trousers. Collarless shirt. Unusual, that, because most blokes wear a tie when they come in of an evening for a drink.’ Suddenly, his face lit up as he remembered something, and he exclaimed, ‘Yes, there was something odd about him!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His eyes!’

  ‘His eyes?’

  The barman nodded. ‘I only noticed it that time when he came to the bar to buy a round. His eyes were different colours. One was brown and one was blue. I’ve never seen that before!’

  ‘I saw him!’ exclaimed Danvers excitedly, then stopped as Stark trod on his foot to silence him.

  ‘Thank you, landlord,’ said Stark. ‘Your assistance has been greatly appreciated.’ He looked towards the table where the man in the checked coat had been sitting. ‘I think you can tell your friend it’s safe to return. I just hope he hasn’t flushed the slips down the toilet.’

  As Stark and Danvers left the pub, Danvers said, ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘That’s all right, Sergeant,’ said Stark. ‘But it doesn’t do to let the opposition see our whole hand.’

  ‘You think the barman’s the opposition?’

  ‘He may not be, but someone else in that place may have been. Now, where did you see this man?’

  ‘At the Communist Party offices the first time I went. He was talking to Naomi, and as I came in, he nipped off. He gave me a suspicious look and that was when I noticed his eyes. They were strange. I’ve never seen that before. Like the barman, said: one brown, one blue.’

  They got back into the car and Stark ordered the driver, ‘Stepney police station.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the driver.

  ‘How did you know that man in the pub was running bets?’ asked Danvers.

  ‘Local knowledge,’ said Stark. ‘My uncle used to run bets, and he also used to wear a jacket with a large checked pattern on it.’ He grinned. ‘I sometimes used to think it was like a uniform. Anyway, it was a hunch that I hoped might help persuade the landlord to help us. After all, he’d be facing a charge of allowing his premises to be used for illegal betting.’

  Stepney police station was just a short distance away, and Stark was soon giving instructions for a team to go and bring in Dan Harker. ‘If I’m not here when you return with him, put him in a cell and I’ll talk to him when I get back.’

  Stark then asked for the private use of a telephone and was taken to one in the inspector’s office.

  He dialled Lady Amelia’s number and felt a tingle of pleasure as he heard her voice at the other end.

  ‘It’s Paul,’ he said.

  ‘Paul! I was hoping you’d telephone.’

  ‘I’m afraid this is business.’

  ‘Business?’

  ‘Serious police business. Do you know where your office colleague, Naomi, lives?’

  ‘Naomi? Why?’

  ‘We need to talk to her urgently. We know who the murderer is, and it looks as if she might be involved.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’

  ‘That’s why we need to talk to her, to eliminate her from our enquiries.’

  ‘I think she lives somewhere near Hackney. I’m not sure where.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone might know her address?’

  ‘It’ll be in the files at the office.’

  ‘Could we meet you there? Or I’ll send a car for you, if you like.’

  ‘Now? It’s half past ten!’

  ‘I’m serious, Amelia; this is really very urgent. I’m trying to stop more people being killed.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll come over. I’ll get a taxi, but it might take a while in this fog.’

  ‘We’ll be parked outside your offices.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Myself and Sergeant Danvers.’

  There was a pause, then she said, ‘I suppose if Bobby is there, I have to remain on my best behaviour. No throwing my arms around your neck.’

  ‘Not at the moment, but soon,’ promised Stark.

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  Stark hung up and returned to the main reception area.

  ‘Lady Amelia Fairfax is going to meet us outside the offices of the Communist Party,’ he told Danvers.

  Danvers looked at him, surprised. ‘At this hour?’ he said. ‘How did you persuade her to do that?’

  ‘I told her people’s lives are at stake,’ said Stark.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Stark and Danvers sat in the back of the car parked outside the Communist Party offices and watched the fog swirl around.

  ‘I’m sorry to subject you to this,’ Stark told the driver. ‘I expect you were hoping for a quiet evening.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the driver. ‘My mother-in-law’s staying with us at the moment, so, to be honest, I’m glad to get out of the house.’

  ‘It might be a long night,’ continued Stark.

  ‘The longer the better, sir,’ said the driver. ‘My mother-in-law drinks, and when she drinks, she gets rowdy and noisy.’ He looked at the clock on the dashboard. ‘About now she’ll be just getting started.’

  ‘You have my sympathies,’ said Stark.

  ‘Someone’s pulling up!’ said Danvers.

  Stark saw the yellow of the car headlights glimmering through the fog. ‘She can’t have made it this quickly,’ he said, surprised.

  ‘It’s another police car,’ said the driver.

  Stark got out and saw the rear door of the police car open and a uniformed sergeant hurry towards him.

  ‘Harker’s gone, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘Done a bunk, by the look of it. Neighbours say he was there this morning, but they reckon he took off this afternoon. He had a bag with him when he went.’

  The same as Alf Rennick, thought Stark. My visit to Mrs Rennick must have stirred them up. They believed I was on to them.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ said Stark.

  He returned to the car and clambered in the back to rejoin Danvers. ‘Harker has gone,’ he said. ‘Just like Alf Rennick.’

  ‘Perhaps this Naomi might be able to tell us where,’ suggested Danvers hopefully.

  Stark shook his head. ‘I doubt it, Sergeant. My money is on her having done a disappearing act as well.’

  It was another half an hour before a taxi pulled up in the street and Amelia got out. Stark and Danvers hurried over to her as she paid the driver.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Lady Amelia,’ said Stark.

  Amelia turned, surprised at the formality of his address, and then spotted Danvers. ‘I would have been here earlier but for this fog,’ she said. ‘The taxi had to crawl.’

  She took a bunch of keys from her purse and opened the street door, then switched on the light and they followed her up the rickety stairs to the Communist Party offices. She switched on the lights and went to the desk where Naomi usually sat. She opened the top drawer, then another, and another, a puzzled frown appearing on her face.

  She went to the two battered grey filings cabinets, unlocked them, and began to go through them, searching. Finding nothing, she went through to the inner office and began searching in there, while Stark followed and watched.

  Finally, she turned to Stark, bewildered. ‘The membership cards have gone,’ she said, returning to the outer office, Stark following her.

  ‘All of them?’ asked Stark.

  ‘So it appears.’

  She saw Stark and Danvers exchange looks, and said, ‘You think Naomi took them?’

  ‘Does she have keys to the place?’

  ‘Of course. She looks after everything. Opens the place up in the morning
and locks it up at night.’ She returned to the desk and began to rummage through the drawers again.

  ‘What did the cards look like?’ asked Stark.

  ‘Like the one I showed you when you forced me to give you the address of that man, Dan Harker.’

  ‘How many of them?’

  ‘About two hundred. They were held together with a rubber band.’ She stopped rummaging. ‘They aren’t here. You think she took them to stop you finding out her address?’

  ‘If that was the case, she’d just take the one,’ said Stark.

  ‘But what use would they be to her?’

  ‘To her, very little. But to the Hand of Justice …’

  She looked at him, concerned. ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am. It now looks as if the Communist Party has been infiltrated by this organization, which has its own, more violent, agenda. They’ve been making contact with your members, persuading some of them to join them.’

  ‘Join them?’

  ‘As assassins. Alf Rennick was one of them. The man who shot Lord Amersham, Tobias Smith and Walter Parrot.’

  She stared at him, horrified, her face going suddenly deathly pale. ‘You mean there are more?’

  Stark nodded. ‘At least, that’s what Alf Rennick told me. We believe the ringleaders are Dan Harker, the man whose address you gave me, Naomi, and a man whose name we don’t know, but he’s got different-coloured eyes. One brown, one blue. Do you have any idea who he is?’

  She stared at him, puzzled. ‘One brown, one blue. How strange!’

  ‘Strange, perhaps, but we need to talk to this man quite urgently.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. With a description like that, I’m sure I’d remember if I’d seen him. No, I’ve never seen him.’

  She looks as if she is going to be sick, thought Stark. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘You weren’t to know what was going on.’

  ‘I was here almost every day with Naomi and I never saw what was happening!’

  ‘You weren’t here all the time. You said yourself that you were only filling in for Mrs Pankhurst.’

  ‘But I should have seen what was going on right under my nose!’ she burst out angrily.

  ‘No,’ said Stark. ‘We never see what’s right up close. None of us. Come, we’ll take you home.’

  She looked around the room, an expression of despair on her face. ‘I thought we were doing so much good work,’ she said. ‘I admired Naomi for her dedication.’

  ‘We don’t know why Naomi got involved,’ said Stark. ‘I’m sure we’ll find out when we catch up with her.’

  They left the room.

  ‘The stable door and the bolting horse leaps to mind,’ she said bitterly as she locked the offices.

  Downstairs in the street, she locked the front door, then climbed into the back of the police car with Stark and Danvers.

  ‘Cadogan Square, driver,’ instructed Stark.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The fog seemed to have eased slightly, although it was hard to be sure because it was now very late – almost midnight – and the yellow gaslight from the street lamps always seemed to have difficulty puncturing the darkness of the city streets, especially in these outer regions.

  Stark and Danvers sat side by side on the back seat, with Amelia sitting opposite them, looking miserable and lost in her own thoughts. The sense of betrayal, thought Stark. He knew what that was like. The first time it happened, it was as if your whole world collapsed about you. People you had trusted were suddenly shown to be false, the whole thing a façade, a humiliating delusion.

  He was glad she was sitting opposite him, because he knew if she had been next to him, he wouldn’t have been able to resist reaching out and taking her hand to squeeze it and reassure her. In different circumstances, he would have put his arm around her, pulled her to him and hugged her close.

  But this was a police vehicle, and Sergeant Danvers was there.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Stark repeated gently. ‘And I doubt if Naomi deliberately set out to dupe you. She had to protect the others. This man with the different-coloured eyes.’ I expect we shall find she was in love with him, he decided. Love makes fools of us all.

  They arrived in Cadogan Square, and Stark opened the rear door of the car. ‘I’ll see you to your door,’ he offered, and walked with Amelia to her house.

  ‘Do you think Bobby Danvers suspects?’ she asked.

  ‘About us? I don’t know. He’s a very good detective, very perceptive, but we’ve hardly been giving ourselves away tonight, I’d have thought.’

  ‘I wanted to throw myself into your arms the whole time we were in the back of that damned car,’ she said.

  ‘I felt exactly the same,’ he admitted.

  They reached the door.

  ‘I can’t kiss you,’ he said. ‘I want to, but Danvers is watching us, and it will raise too many issues while this investigation is still ongoing.’

  ‘The fog’s thick,’ she said.

  ‘Not that thick,’ he said.

  She opened her purse and took out her key. ‘If you want to come back tonight, I shall still be awake.’

  ‘I do want to come back, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to,’ said Stark. ‘This is going to be a very long night. Sergeant Danvers and I have a lot of work to do.’

  ‘Tomorrow then?’ she asked hopefully. ‘It’s not just the sex, it’s … I want to feel your arms around me.’

  He nodded. ‘Tomorrow. I promise.’

  He waited until the door had closed, then returned to the car.

  ‘Scotland Yard,’ he said to the driver.

  ‘Do you think she’s telling the truth?’ asked Danvers. ‘About never having seen this man, the one with the different-coloured eyes?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘But he was at the offices. I saw him!’

  ‘I know you did, Sergeant. But my guess is that he was making a rare visit to get information from his friend Naomi, and once he realized the police were hanging around the offices, he decided to keep his distance.’

  Danvers fell silent, thinking. Then he said, ‘You think the membership cards will have the names and addresses of the assassins?’

  ‘I do,’ nodded Stark.

  ‘There are two hundred cards.’

  ‘Then let’s hope there aren’t two hundred assassins.’

  The first thing Stark did when they reached Scotland Yard was to phone the technical department.

  ‘Higgins,’ said a voice.

  ‘This is DCI Stark. I need an artist,’ said Stark.

  ‘At this hour? It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning! I’m only here manning the phone in case there’s an emergency.’

  ‘This is an emergency. I need an artist to draw some portraits for wanted posters.’

  ‘Wanted posters? Can’t it wait until the morning?’

  ‘These people have murdered three high-profile men. If we don’t catch them, they’ll murder more. I want these portraits to be in the papers first thing tomorrow morning. So I need an artist now. In the next half hour.’

  There was a pause, then Higgins said unhappily, ‘I’ll see what I can do. But I shall put in a report!’

  ‘I would do exactly the same,’ said Stark.

  He hung up, then handed the photograph of Alf and Ted Rennick to Danvers.

  ‘While we’re waiting for this artist to arrive, I want you to get a copy of this photograph made, then copies made of just the man on the left, Alf Rennick. And, Sergeant …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Take good care of that photograph. The photo people can do what they want with the copies, but I don’t want them getting their inky fingerprints all over the original.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it, sir,’ Danvers assured him.

  As soon as Danvers had left, Stark lifted the phone again.

  ‘Switchboard,’ said the operator.

  ‘Put me through to Chief Superintendent Benson at his h
ome, please,’ said Stark.

  There was a long delay, during which Stark heard the ringing tone, before the phone was finally picked up.

  ‘Benson,’ muttered the chief superintendent’s groggy voice.

  ‘Chief Superintendent, I have DCI Stark on the line for you. You’re through, DCI Stark.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Stark. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you at this hour, sir, but we now have the information we need. We know who committed the murders, and why.’

  Briefly, Stark filled in Benson on what they had learned so far. ‘The reason I’m phoning is that we need to put out wanted notices for these people and get them into the early editions of tomorrow’s newspapers. I’d like to put a reward on them. That usually encourages people who might know them to come forward.’

  ‘How much were you thinking? We have to watch the budget, you know, Stark.’

  ‘I was going to suggest a hundred pounds for each of them.’

  ‘Four hundred pounds?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.

  ‘That’s a lot of money.’

  ‘It might save the life of someone like the Home Secretary. Or even the Prime Minister.’

  ‘You believe they are under threat?’

  ‘If we are right, there is a secret army of assassins out there, ready to carry out more killings of important people. The people I want to put out the wanted notices for are the only people who know the assassins’ identities. We need to get hold of them, and fast.’

  ‘Very well,’ agreed Benson. ‘But it had better work, Stark.’

  ‘I hope it will, sir,’ said Stark.

  He hung up, picked up a pen and began to draft out the wording for the wanted posters. The first one was straightforward.

  Wanted for Murder

  Alf Rennick

  If you see this man, report him to your nearest police station.

  This man is armed and dangerous. Do not approach him.

  £100 Reward leading to his capture.

  The second and third were less direct.

  Wanted

  In connection with a series of murders

  Dan Harker

  If you see this man or have any information about him,

  report him to your nearest police station.

  This man is armed and dangerous. Do not approach him.